Drawing upon decades of experience, RAND provides research services, systematic analysis, and innovative thinking to a global clientele that includes government agencies, foundations, and private-sector firms.

The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

Download eBook for Free

This dissertation uses existing data to help understand the effect of changes in the private insurance marketplace on SA treatment services. The author examined the impact of cost-sharing and different approaches to behavioral health benefit management on SA treatment service utilization using two separate administrative data sets and conducted analyses of the effects of cost-sharing across different types of SA treatment services. He found low rates of documented SA treatment (0.37%) but higher rates of treatment following detoxification (78%) than documented in other populations. Results demonstrate that different approaches to managing SA benefits and different levels of patient cost-sharing both significantly affect the type and amount of SA treatment utilization. Patients whose SA treatment was managed separately rather than by an HMO had less inpatient and routine outpatient treatment, but higher levels of intermediate SA treatment. Individuals with higher SA copayments were less likely than those with little or no copayment to receive residential SA treatment and specialty SA outpatient treatment; higher levels of copayments were also associated with less treatment following inpatient detoxification. More generous SA benefits are a potential approach to improving access to and quality of SA treatment, but the low rates of treatment suggest that the impact of this approach may be limited.

Research conducted by

This report is part of the RAND Corporation dissertation series. Pardee RAND dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world's leading producer of Ph.D.'s in policy analysis. The dissertations are supervised, reviewed, and approved by a Pardee RAND faculty committee overseeing each dissertation.

Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.